Despite protests from far-right minister, Gazan detainees moved out of ‘Israel’s Guantanamo Bay’

A protest outside Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility, May 2024

Bar Peleg reports in Haaretz on 12 June 2024:

The Israeli government informed the High Court on Tuesday that by the end of June, all detainees in Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility will be evacuated and transferred to other prisons in Israel or released to Gaza.

The decision, signed off by National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, was made despite the opposition of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is in charge of the Israel Prison Service.

According to the announcement, the Sde Teiman facility will return to its original purpose and serve as an initial screening site for security detainees from the Gaza Strip.

Before detainees began to be transferred out of the facility, around 700 people were held in Sde Teiman; three of them are hospitalized at a medical facility next to it.

The state’s response to a petition against the facility shows that the state has transferred 211 detainees to the Ofer Prison near central Israel’s Giv’at Zeev, and that an additional 289 detainees are expected to be transferred next week. Around 250 detainees were transferred to Ketziot Prison, and 30 more detainees are expected to be transferred to Gaza on Tuesday.

The state also claimed that renovation works are currently being carried out at the facility, after which it will be “more spacious.” The works include upgrading infrastructure and establishing designated areas for recovery and medical examinations. New toilets and showers will also be built, and four courtyards will be delineated.

It also appears from the state’s response that within three months, three new prison complexes will be built within the facility, including beds and tables affixed to the floor.

The response further noted that as part of the work of the team appointed by Israeli army chief Herzl Halevi to inspect the incarceration conditions at the site, the state appealed to the public and called on anyone who knows about any illegal incidents on the site to provide information.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said that “Sde Teiman is a facility where the conditions are inhumane and incarceration there could constitute a war crime.

“Detention in Sde Teiman is prohibited both by Israeli and international law, even if it for short periods, screening purposes, or when the number of detainees is low. It is prohibited to imprison [detainees] there or provide medical treatment [at the facility]. Sde Teiman should be closed,” the Association added.

The Public Committee Against Torture was even more scathing in its comments: “Six months after the war began, we can clearly say: It seems that Israel is operating a sort of Guantanamo prison of its own,” board members Dr. Bettina Birmans and Dr. Tamar Lavie wrote in Haaretz Hebrew edition on April 15.

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